Finish This Thought
May 23, 2011 8:58 PM Subscribe
Finish This Thought
Just a little website I hacked together in my spare time. It's pretty self explanatory.
Just a little website I hacked together in my spare time. It's pretty self explanatory.
Role: creator
Oh, and the main column would just serve up unfinished thoughts.
posted by carsonb at 10:26 PM on May 23, 2011
posted by carsonb at 10:26 PM on May 23, 2011
OK granted I am super tired at the moment, but possibly this is not as self explanatory as you think.
Little help here?
posted by DarlingBri at 5:59 AM on May 24, 2011
Little help here?
posted by DarlingBri at 5:59 AM on May 24, 2011
I did not find this website self-explanatory.
posted by John Cohen at 9:32 AM on May 24, 2011
posted by John Cohen at 9:32 AM on May 24, 2011
Ah, sorry. Loading the site, you see an incomplete thought and a text box. You finish the thought. There is a chance the site might ask you to start a thought, so type the beginning of an idea or something. Then you can vote up or down completed thoughts.
posted by paladin at 9:48 AM on May 24, 2011
posted by paladin at 9:48 AM on May 24, 2011
This is the funnest thing.
posted by not_on_display at 11:34 AM on May 24, 2011
posted by not_on_display at 11:34 AM on May 24, 2011
So far, the only real problem I've had is the burn through thought fragments started. People finish thoughts but don't start new ones. Anyone have an idea of how to get people to start thoughts? Pretty much useless, this site is, without thoughts to finish.
posted by paladin at 12:11 PM on May 24, 2011
posted by paladin at 12:11 PM on May 24, 2011
Maybe make it a requirement for the user to start a thought before they finish a thought? Or vice versa. Or, maybe find a list of aphorisms, and capture the text up to and including the comma, and seed your thing from that.
posted by not_on_display at 12:27 PM on May 24, 2011
posted by not_on_display at 12:27 PM on May 24, 2011
OK, I think I've solved the problem of thought fragment burn, and I fixed a nasty bug that came as a consequence of that solution. I think I'm ready for more traffic now, I'll have to think how I might get some...
posted by paladin at 1:25 AM on May 29, 2011
posted by paladin at 1:25 AM on May 29, 2011
Slightly shamefaced to admit it, but I just advanced the lube/complaining cats thought from seventh place to second by clicking upvote about a dozen times. I stopped there only because the apple store entry is such a gem.
posted by L'oeuvre Child at 3:42 AM on May 30, 2011
posted by L'oeuvre Child at 3:42 AM on May 30, 2011
Hahahaha. So it was you! Yeah, that's fine, that one is pretty funny.
posted by paladin at 12:57 PM on May 30, 2011
posted by paladin at 12:57 PM on May 30, 2011
I really like this. I'm having some issues with Safari on a Mac though with the captcha. No issue on any other captcha driven sites though. Might just be a hiccup on my end but flagging for you in case it isn't.
posted by TravellingCari at 3:50 PM on May 30, 2011
posted by TravellingCari at 3:50 PM on May 30, 2011
Neat site! But... please don't make me do a captcha every single time.
posted by Flunkie at 5:06 PM on May 30, 2011
posted by Flunkie at 5:06 PM on May 30, 2011
Yeah, I know the captcha is annoying, but I've had nightmares of pages and pages of "thoughts" starting with "http://" and ending with NSFW pages. Someone with a possible solution?
posted by paladin at 12:08 AM on May 31, 2011
posted by paladin at 12:08 AM on May 31, 2011
I just wasted way too much time on that. Great stuff, thanks.
posted by herbplarfegan at 1:16 PM on June 3, 2011
posted by herbplarfegan at 1:16 PM on June 3, 2011
This is fun :).
If there's any way to get rid of the captcha, that would be great, although it probably isn't as annoying if you're not on a mobile phone.
I have a site with a guestbook that (to my surprise) was getting prolifically spammed by linkbots, so I added a simple text field that asked users to type what 2 + 3 is. Never got another bot entry. I think that would be nicer than the fancy captcha, although your site is certainly more popular than mine, so maybe you'd get hit with more intelligent spambots than I did.
Also, it would be nice to have a slicker interface, as carsonb suggests, but it's cool as is too.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:13 AM on June 6, 2011
If there's any way to get rid of the captcha, that would be great, although it probably isn't as annoying if you're not on a mobile phone.
I have a site with a guestbook that (to my surprise) was getting prolifically spammed by linkbots, so I added a simple text field that asked users to type what 2 + 3 is. Never got another bot entry. I think that would be nicer than the fancy captcha, although your site is certainly more popular than mine, so maybe you'd get hit with more intelligent spambots than I did.
Also, it would be nice to have a slicker interface, as carsonb suggests, but it's cool as is too.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:13 AM on June 6, 2011
(oh, in case it wasn't obvious, the text field was part of a cgi backend that checked to make sure the user put "5" into the text field, and otherwise ignored the whole submission)
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:15 AM on June 6, 2011
posted by Salvor Hardin at 6:15 AM on June 6, 2011
Just had a good old time on this!
It could probably be quite an awesome little corner of the interent - if you can (or have anyone else who can) work on giving it a super glossy 2.0 feel with a nice big obvious "THOUGHT: ___" box and under it an alternative complete-a-thought box, it would probably be a really easy way to build up the database by simply making the whole process easier for the expectant user.
Spam bots : exactly as good friend Salvor says (either "2+3" or a small icon of a Dog and a little text next to it "What animal is this? A Dog or a Cat?") alternatively try some reverse captcha. Simplest way would be to have a field completely left blank and your backend scripts would spam-flag (cancel) any request that would have this field filled out, then hide it "display: none;" in css (as most bots don't care about css) so the user would be blissfully unawares.
Good work Paladin, fun little place that works very efficiently at crowd-sourcing bite sized chunks of entertainment - much as in the ideal flow of facebook and wiki btw. If you build this up a bit and make a deal of all of the standardised Social Media links on it and some ads, you could probably do quite well out of it :) But the inevitaility of too-many-trolls-spoil-the-fun would become annoying if it became too widespread eg: The cleverness would probably dumb down.
Really awesome and fun site :)
posted by Cogentesque at 5:04 AM on August 5, 2011
It could probably be quite an awesome little corner of the interent - if you can (or have anyone else who can) work on giving it a super glossy 2.0 feel with a nice big obvious "THOUGHT: ___" box and under it an alternative complete-a-thought box, it would probably be a really easy way to build up the database by simply making the whole process easier for the expectant user.
Spam bots : exactly as good friend Salvor says (either "2+3" or a small icon of a Dog and a little text next to it "What animal is this? A Dog or a Cat?") alternatively try some reverse captcha. Simplest way would be to have a field completely left blank and your backend scripts would spam-flag (cancel) any request that would have this field filled out, then hide it "display: none;" in css (as most bots don't care about css) so the user would be blissfully unawares.
Good work Paladin, fun little place that works very efficiently at crowd-sourcing bite sized chunks of entertainment - much as in the ideal flow of facebook and wiki btw. If you build this up a bit and make a deal of all of the standardised Social Media links on it and some ads, you could probably do quite well out of it :) But the inevitaility of too-many-trolls-spoil-the-fun would become annoying if it became too widespread eg: The cleverness would probably dumb down.
Really awesome and fun site :)
posted by Cogentesque at 5:04 AM on August 5, 2011
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I find I want to finish lots of thoughts though, more than I'd like to vote up/down other recent thoughts. I'd like it more if it had columns, with recently finished thoughts (and the up/down vote buttons) in one, popular or random finished thoughts in another, and 'navigation' that wasn't stacked down at the bottom of the page.
posted by carsonb at 10:26 PM on May 23, 2011